This year’s presidential campaign just got more volatile with the passing of perhaps the most polarizing figure in American politics, Antonin Scalia.
Advertisement
There are almost 11 months until a new president takes office, and in the interim, the high court will operate with only eight justices. “There will be plenty of time for me to do so and for the Senate to fulfill its responsibility”.
Obama’s remarks are sure to inflame Republicans on Capitol Hill and on the campaign trail, who have said that the president should let the 2016 presidential race play out, rather than putting forward his own nominee. The Senate will have to decide whether to confirm or leave the seat on the Supreme Court vacant for more than a year.
“Justice Scalia was an American hero”.
His death comes as the court is set to hear its first major abortion case in almost 10 years, and ahead of key cases on voting rights, affirmative action and immigration.
In one of his most passionate stands, Scalia argued the right to an abortion never appears in the U.S. Constitution, and that the Supreme Court’s historic 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that created a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion was wrongly decided. He also said he and Scalia shared evenings with Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who Feldman had mentored when she was appointed to the District Court. The Senate’s top Democrat, Harry Reid, says it would be “unprecedented in recent history” for the Supreme Court to go a year with a vacancy and urged Obama to send the Senate a nominee right away.
Scalia, a Catholic, was appointed in 1986 by President Ronald Reagan.
CNN Senior Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin predicted “one of the great battles in United States history” looms over whether “Obama’s nominee even gets a vote”.
“My guess is that the White House will try, knowing full well it might not work”, he said, noting that forcing Senate Republicans to block a qualified Asian or Hispanic candidate could carry “political cost” for Republicans.
The Obama White House is expected to nominate a replacement, according to multiple news reports.
Article II of the Constitution gives the president power to appoint Supreme Court justices with the “advice and consent of the Senate”. Senate Republicans fought the nomination, claiming “cronyism”, and Johnson withdrew it. The appointment fell to his successor, Republican Richard Nixon.
In a statement, she praised Scalia as a dedicated public servant but also had a warning for the GOP. “The Senate has a constitutional responsibility here that it can not abdicate for partisan political reasons”.
“Unless he (Obama) can find a consensus choice, the next president will pick the replacement for Justice Scalia”, said Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican who also sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Sanders issued a statement that offered sympathy while acknowledging philosophical differences.
There’s no deadline or timetable for considering a Supreme Court nomination.
“The President and First Lady extend their deepest condolences to Justice Scalia’s family”, Schultz said.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott described the conservative Justice as a “man of God, a patriot and an unwavering defender of the written Constitution and the rule of law”.
Advertisement
In 1992, Scalia told a group of high school students at Washington’s Georgetown Visitation High School that, as Catholics, they might feel out of step with the rest of the world, but they should learn to accept it and take pride in it. He said he was raised a Catholic when the religion was not in the mainstream.
